One of the worst things we’ve done as Christians is making people think that to ask for help when you truly need it makes you a beggar, and somehow that beggars are bad. As a man who grew up in the south, the hardest thing for me was going on disability and not working outside the home. I lost my identity. My manhood. I became the beggar, and as most of us growing up heard, “I refused to beg to for help.”
The Bible has this amazing passage in Matthew 25 where you have Jesus saying to the sheep and the goats that when you visit the prison, you visit him. When you visit the sick, you visit him. When you clothe the naked, the immigrant… you clothe Jesus. We all want to be the one clothing Jesus, don’t we? The one giving Him the water. The one there for Him when He is imprisoned physically, mentally, or spiritually.
A friend of mine struggled with this. Both of us being disabled, unable to work, we traveled together often. Once on a retreat, he needed help, and I couldn’t give it. I needed to get others who were stronger, abler. He refused at first. Then one of the men stepped forward and said to my friend, “Let me be Jesus to you.”
Think about that for a minute, we need people to clothe the naked, and people to be humble enough to admit a need for clothing. We need people to be there for those bound by some physical, mental, or spiritual bondage… and we need those who will open up to them about that bondage and express their need. Don’t be too proud to be Jesus. Sure, we all want to be the parts of the body that get the recognition. The hands, the feet, the mouth, the eyes. Some of us need to be the broken and battered pinky toe, letting someone know of its struggles so they can bind it to the toe next to it to help it heal so it can function again.
When you refuse to be the beggar not only do you prevent Jesus from visiting you through someone else, but you prevent Jesus from being seen by those in the world who need to see Him. Those who need to know that Jesus is both there visiting you, coming present in this world by those who work as His hands and feet to serve those in need; and that Jesus is there in your own dignity that is still present when being served. Stopping Jesus from coming to you in this way is simply hiding behind a wall of pride, almost as if you are naked and afraid in the garden.
So be naked. Be broken. Be real. Be hungry and thirsty. That is another way to bring Jesus into the world, by letting others be Jesus for you and to encounter Jesus in you as well.